When we moved in, we became the proud owners of a beautiful lawn. A lawn we had no interest in maintaing.

It surrounded the house. Far from being a blank canvas- this was canvas with someone else’s painting on it.

I have mentioned before that I don’t understand peoples’ obsession with lawns. They offer no value to the bees. You have to constantly cut them or they habor ticks. Further more, they make you itchy when you roll on them (the only real purpose in my opinion for grass in the first place.)

No thank you.

We were excited to turn this expanse into a great garden. But since we moved in late in the summer we had to wait till the following year to put our garden plans into action.

There were many things about New England I was blissfully unaware of when we moved.

My first few years I marveled at the endless rock walls here.

They are EVERYWHERE and it is not like they really keep anything in or out. The vast majority are about 4 feet tall and a couple feet wide.

I had assumed that these walls were built to serve some purpose. Now I know the truth, you can’t pull out a clump of grass here without finding a rock.

It is like the natives planted rock seeds, knowing that it would make anything the white man wanted to do- very difficult.

5X15 feet of dirt and a metric-butt-load of not just rocks, BOULDERS. So I started a pile and called “stuff I’m not going to move”

This year was a easier since we had the beds from last year. That is not to say we didn’t have any encounters of the rocky kind.

It took the whole family and one broken shovel to get these babies out.

This year we started planting as soon as we could.

Here in Maine, that would be about May. You can see the leaves have not even sprouted on the trees. We are impatient about some things.

The garden started the same way it always does when my husband is involved- with corn. I don’t know what his deal is but that guy goes corn crazy every spring. He then moves on to tomatoes and puts those anywhere there is not corn.

We let last year’s garden go to seed so that we would have plenty of hardy varieties we knew would do well with our short growing season. This year we added to this and I doubt we are done.

I planted sunflowers. Lots and lots of mammoth sunflowers from our last year’s seeds. The boys helped too so now there are sprouts pretty much everywhere. We may have gone a bit overboard but Ry was too busy planting corn to notice.

Our sunflowers from last year.

below you can see this year’s sunflowers and corn (a couple weeks ago.)

You can see my border of sunflowers on the far right and Ry’s rows of corn, everywhere else.

We planted four apple trees last year, that were no more than sticks. Today they look like honest-to-god trees, though it will be years before they will bare fruit.

We have planted a large verity of fruits and veggies including but not limited to:

Corn- an heirloom jewel (new this year) and sweet yellow.

Pumpkins- a few different varieties. I found out that pumpkin seeds de-worm chickens. Not that they have any but you can never be too carful.

Squash- zucchini, summer, spaghetti.

Melons- chaolin, watermelons, catalope.

Beans- string and bush of many different verities.

Tomotillos- purple and green.

Carrots- all colors.

beets- all colors.

Onions and chives

Rhubarb.

Radishes.

Broccoli

Tomatoes- more types than I can count.

Pretty much all tomatoes this year. That and the Jewel corn, so that there is no cross pollination. We also staggered the planting by 3 weeks.

Peppers

There are others that I am sure I am now forgetting and I have no doubt that there will be some add-ons as the summer progresses.

We have a long way to go before the fall and harvest. We have learned the hard way that all it takes is one good Noreaster to rip out or knock over almost everything you worked for all summer.

For now, we wait.

We have decided to lay down black ground cloth and rocks to keep the grass were we want it- and The boys have plans to terrace the whole front yard.

Fine by me. Move all the rocks you want.

Our yard has changed a lot over the past few years:

Year 1.to this…and now this.

The back yard has gone through many changes as well:

Our wedding day, the alter in the middle was made to go up into a bonfire. 🙂